


Imperial

by Mags



Series: Avengersbent [4]
Category: Homestuck, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Lots of relationships if you squint, Lowblood psychology stuff, Troll AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 21:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mags/pseuds/Mags
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a lowblood like you, seadwellers are the ideal that you've internalized. Having met some of them personally, you're a little less star-struck in daily life but it's still your favorite thing to draw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperial

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of alternate titles for this one: "Steave has self-esteem issues and worships seadwellers", "Steave has raging boners for seadwellers but is totally in denial", "Steave appreciates seadwellers in a more than aesthetic sense", and "Steave gets over his seadweller kink to a level wherein he can function in daily life".

As a wiggler, you only see seadwellers about every third perigee, and from far away. Usually it’s the seadweller in charge of your district, but sometimes younger seadwellers some seeking thrills in the rustblood parts of the hive cluster.

Adorned in gold and purple, you think they’re beautiful. Since your blood is a few shades above brown, that is only right and just. Seadwellers are of course by their nature perfect.

(Your appreciation is of a purely aesthetic nature--an artist’s viewpoint. Nevermind that your sketchbook is full of finned faces and the anatomical intricacies of gills and double-lidded eyes full of pity and hate.)

You and Buckee sneak out when you hear one is coming and you try to get a closer look. That stops around when you turn nine, and the war starts.

Though you try to enlist (over and over) you’re left behind every time. Buckee’s filled out beautifully (again, purely aesthetic appreciation here) and is accepted immediately, while you could probably take first in a “scrawniest rustblood” contest.

The first seadweller you really see up close is Hauard Starck on a seemingly ordinary morning. Buckee, about to leave, has set you up on a double-date (flushed, of course) and Starck is up on stage, bright and so full of life compared to the lowbloods you live with, showing off some flying mechanical device or other.

It breaks and you finally get accepted into the military but the slight webbing between fingers and the graceful arch of a fin is meticulously recorded in your sketchbook.

*

After you’re chosen for Project Rebirth you see more and more seadwellers (usually Hauard, but older, less familiar finned figures pass you in the halls sometimes) and at some point catching a glimpse of a fin passes imperceptibly from exhilarating to everyday and a teal, one Pegaza Carser, features more heavily in your sketchbook.

Your own rebirth is overseen by a whole panel of seadwellers but you’re not nervous at that. Oh no, there are plenty of other things to be worried about: the experimental technology, the expectations on you, the war that’s still raging up there, Pegaza’s presence (and surely she’s judging you with dislike), Buckee’s absence (and surely he’s missing you, wherever he is).

But everything goes better than expected until the room above explodes (you don’t notice it at the time but it’s beautiful, forbidden purple that spills over the edge). Abrahm Erskin, the flower of mad scientific genius whose intellect you’ve come to appreciate, goes down in a splash of lime and them it’s a mad chase in a new body that is so, _so_ much better than your own.

It’s not until you lose (the traitor, the serum, your innocence) that you notice that the cut on your hand bleeds green.

*

You don’t see much of Pegaza or Hauard while you tour Alternia and the surrounding colonies. You _do_ , however, get far too close for comfort to a group of hatecrushing bluebloods and an unamused subjugglator and waves upon waves of fawning fans of all colors.

It’s not until you make it to the battlefield that you see some familiar faces--Hauard and Pegaza, and Buckee and the Howling Commandos later, become a constant. Aside from Hauard (who is remarkably low-key for a seadweller) the only other seadweller you see on a regular basis is Redskull.

In your first encounter, his face seems tacky, plasticky, fake, and his fins unnaturally limp, but you are a little distracted by the flames to speculate.

Redskull soon shows you his namesake, though, tossing his false face into the growing inferno. His skin is bright candy red, stretched tight over angular cheekbones and sunken nose. The skeletal remains of his fins stretch too far out, raking the air with his every movement.

Though he claims to be the rightful leader of a new trollish state (and, though you have no comparison, his eyes do seem tyrian) but he is a cruel mockery of everything a leader should be. _I’ll stick with Her Imperious Condescension, thank you very much_ , you say to him, and it’s the truth.

Your increasingly caliginous campaign against Redskull lasts only a sweep before you hitch a fateful ride on Redskull’s orbit-to-surface bombing platform.

But, really, it’s fitting. You were hatched a rustblood, and you’ll die like one--not even a quadrant to your name, brought out to wow civilians and take down the rebels but nothing more, with false green blood running through your veins.

You think it’ll be a nice, quiet death, buried on some frozen rock in the far reaches of the solar system. And it is, for hundreds of sweeps.

*

At your second rebirth you see only the similarities: small fins, emotive eyebrows, smooth jawline, hooked horns, Tangates symbol printed on a tank top. You make a fool of yourself and barely manage to avoid becoming a sobbing mess right there in front of everybody.

It’s not until later that you see the differences: smaller nose, deep-set (underslept) eyes, carefully managed beard, glowing circle in the middle of his shirt. This Tangates is not his ancestor, no matter how much you wish otherwise.

But something he says in passing sticks with you. _Honorary highblood_. It’s terribly improper for a copperblood (or even an ersatz greenblood) to have anything more than deep platonic appreciation and respect for a seadweller, but a highblood? Highbloods, unlike you, are allowed to have _opinions_.

Then, after your first night out of the ice, he leaves and you don’t know where he’s gone (and that careless freedom feels _far_ more seadwellerly). You hang out with some other SHIELD agents, bluebloods all, but it isn’t quite the same.

For the next perigee (as SHIELD treats you like you’re made of glass) you see little of the Polymath (for even in your own head it feels a bit sacrilegious to call him Tony) until, in the guise of Captain Alternia, you meet in Stuttgart Colony.


End file.
